“Me?”
“Like Di? Did you cut yourself?”
Alison turned back to her packing. She was perplexed. It had never occurred to her that she might have inflicted the damage herself. Perhaps I did, she thought, and I’ve just forgotten; there is so much I’ve forgotten, so much that has slipped away from me. It was a long time since she’d given much thought to the scars. They flared, in a hot bath, and the skin around them itched in hot weather. She avoided seeing them, which was not difficult if she avoided mirrors. But now, she thought, Colette will always be noticing them. I had better have a story because she will want answers.
She fingered her damaged flesh; the skin felt dead and distant. She remembered Morris saying, we showed you what a blade could do! For the first time she thought, oh, I see now, that was what they taught me; that was the lesson I had.
six
As they drove north, Colette said to Alison, “When you were a little girl, did you ever think you were a princess?”
“Me? God, no.”
“What did you think then?
“I thought I was a freak.”
And now? The question hung in the air. It was the day of Diana’s funeral, and the road was almost empty. Al had slept badly. Beyond the bedroom wall of the flat in Wexham, Colette had heard her muttering, and heard the deep groan of her mattress as she turned over and over in bed. She had been downstairs at seven-thirty, standing in the kitchen, bundled into her dressing gown, her hair straggling out of its rollers. “We may as well get on the road,” she said. “Get ahead of the coffin.”
By ten-thirty, crowds were assembling on the bridges over the M1, waiting for the dead woman to pass by on her way to her ancestral burial ground just off Junction 15A. The police were lining the route as if waiting for disaster, drawn up in phalanxes of motorcycles and cordons of watching vans. It was a bright, cool morning—perfect September weather.
“S’funny,” Colette said. “It’s only a fortnight ago, those pictures of her in the boat with Dodi, in her bikini. And we were all saying, what a slapper.”
Al opened the glove box and ferreted out a chocolate biscuit.
“That’s the emergency Kit-Kat,” Colette protested.
“This is an emergency. I couldn’t eat my breakfast.” She ate the chocolate morosely, finger by finger. “If Gavin had been the Prince of Wales,” she said, “do you think you’d have tried harder with your marriage?”
“Definitely.”
Colette’s eyes were on the road; in the passenger seat Alison twisted over her shoulder to look at Morris in the back, kicking his short legs and singing a medley of patriotic songs. As they passed beneath a bridge policemen’s faces peered down at them, pink sweating ovals above the sick glow of high-visability jackets. Stubble-headed boys—the type who, in normal times, heave a concrete block through your windscreen—now jabbed the mild air with bunches of carnations. A ragged bedsheet, grey-white, drifted down into their view. It was scrawled in crimson capitals, as if in virgin’s blood: DIANA, QUEEN OF OUR HEARTS.
“You’d think they’d show more respect,” Alison said. “Not flap about with their old bed linen.”
“Dirty linen,” Colette said. “She washed her dirty linen … . it comes back on you in the end.”
They sped a mile or two in silence.
“I mean it’s not as if it’s exactly a surprise. You didn’t expect it to last, did you? Not as if she was exactly stable. If she’d been in real life, she’d have been just the sort of slag who’d end up with her arms and legs in left-luggage lockers and her head in a bin bag in Walthamstow.”
“Shh!” Al said. “She might be listening. She’s not gone yet, you know, not as far as I—as far as we’re concerned.”
“Do you think you might get a message from Dodi? No, I forgot, you don’t do ethnics, do you?”
At each bridge they glanced up. The crowds thickened. As they crossed the border into Northamptonshire, a leather-jacketed man was waving the Stars and Stripes. The hitchhikers lurking by the slip roads had tied black bands around their sleeves.
Alison hummed along with Morris, who was doing “Land of Our Fathers.” She struggled to find loyalty within herself: loyalty, compassion, something other than mere fatigue at the thought of the trouble Diana was going to cause her. “Of course,” she said, “she was against land mines.”
“That doesn’t seem much to be against,” Colette said. “Not exactly sticking your neck out, is it? Not like being against … dolphins.”
Silence within the car: except that Morris, in the back, had progressed to “Roll Out the Barrel.” A helicopter whirled overhead, monitoring the near-empty road.
“We’re much too early,” Colette said. “Our room won’t be ready. Do you want to stop for a wee? Or a proper breakfast? Could you manage a fry-up?”
Al thought, when I was awake in the night, I was so cold. Being cold makes you feel sick; or does feeling sick make you cold? Nothing to be hoped for from days like these, except nausea, cramps, shortness of breath, acceleration of the pulse, gooseflesh, and a leaden tinge to the skin.
Colette said, “Five miles, shall I pull in? Make your mind up, yes or no?”
Morris, at once, stopped singing and began agitating for his comfort stop. He showed an unhealthy interest in gents’ toilets: when he swarmed back into the car after a break at a service area, you could catch the whiff of piss and floral disinfectant from the crepe soles of his shoes. He liked to creep around the parked cars, pulling off hubcaps and bowling them like hoops among the feet of their returning owners. He would double up with laughter as the punters stood jaw dropped at the sight of the metal discs, spinning of their own volition, clattering to rest amid the overspill of polystyrene from the litter bins. Sometimes he would go into the shop and pull the newspapers from their racks, tossing top-shelf magazines into the wire baskets of respectable dads queuing with their families for giant packs of crisps. He would plunge his paw into the pick ’n’ mix sweets and stuff his bulging jaw. He would snatch from the shelves of travellers’ supplies a tartan box of choc-chip shortbread or traditional motorway fudge; then munching, spitting, denouncing it as ladies’ pap, he would head for the lorry park, for the caff where men’s men swigged from mugs of strong tea.
He hoped, always, to see somebody he knew, Aitkenside or Bob Fox or even bloody MacArthur, “though if I see MacArthur,” he’d say, “the ruddy swindler’ll wish he’d never been born, I’ll creep up on his blind side and twist his head off.” He would sneak around the parked-up rigs, bouncing himself on the bumper bars to snap off windscreen wipers; through the gaps in frilled curtains, he would peep in at the private interiors where tattooed drivers snored against flowered cushions, where hands rubbed lonely crotches: ooh, sissy-boy, Morris would jeer, and sometimes a man stirred from his doze and jolted awake, thinking for a moment that he had seen a yellow face staring in at him, lips drawn back in a grimace to show yellow fangs, like those of an ape behind toughened glass. I was dreaming, the man would tell himself: I was dreaming, what brought that on?
Truth was, he longed for a friend; it was no life, holed up with a bunch of women, always squawking and making leaflets. “Oh, what shall we have,” he mimicked, “shall we have a flower, a rose is nice, a dove of peace is nice, shall we have a dove of peace with a flower in its mouf?” Then would come Colette’s higher, flatter voice. “Beak, Alison, a beak’s what birds have.” Then Alison, “It doesn’t sound so nice, bill’s nicer, doesn’t a dove have a bill?” and Colette’s grudging, “You could be right.”
Bill’s nice, is it, he would jeer, from his perch on the back of the sofa: “bill’s nice, you should see the bloody bills I’ve mounted up, I could tell you about bills, Aitkenside owes me a pony, bloody Bill Wagstaffe, he owes me. I’ll give him Swan of bloody Avon, I put him on a florin at Doncaster only to oblige, goo-on, he says, goo-on, I’ll give you ’alf Morris he says if she romps home, romp, did she bloody romp, she ran like the clappers out of hell, dropped
dead two hours after in her trailer, but san-fairy-ann, what’s that to me, and where’s my fiver? Then he’s explainin, ooh Morris, the trouble is I’m dead, the trouble is there’s a steward’s enquiry, the trouble is my pocket got frayed, the trouble is it must of fallen out me pocket of me pantaloons and bloody Kyd snapped it up, I say, then you get after Kyd and break his legs or I will, he says the trouble is he’s dead he ain’t got no legs, I says William old son don’t come that wiv me, break him where ’is legs would be.”
When he thought of the debts he had incurred, of the injuries done and what was rightfully owed him, he would run after Alison, agitated: after his hostess, his missus. Al would be in the kitchen making a toasted sandwich. He was eager to press on her the weight of his injustices, but she would say to him, get away, Morris, get your fingers out of that lo-fat cheddar. He wanted a man’s life, men’s company, and he would creep around the lorry park waving, gesturing, looking for his mates, making the secret signal that men make to other men, to say they want a chin-wag and a smoke, to say they’re lonely, to say they want company but they’re not like that. Bloody Wagstaffe were like that, if you ask me, he would tell Alison, but she would say, who? Him in pantaloons, he’d say. Come on, I wasn’t born yesterday, anybody showing his legs like that ’as got to be of the fairy persuasion. And again she’d say, who? dabbing up a shaving of cheese with her finger, and he’d say, Wagstaffe, he’s bloody famous, you must have heard of him, he’s coining it, he’s got his name in bloody lights and what do I get? Not even me stake money back. Not even me florin.
So in the caff at the lorry park he would roll between the tables, saying, “’scuse me mate, ’scuse me mate”—because he wanted to be polite—“have you seen Aitkenside around here? Cos Aitkenside he used to drive a forty-two-tonner, and he ’ad this belly dancer tattooed on his back, he got it when he were in Egypt, he were in the forces, he were stationed overseas, Aitken-side. And he’s a mermaid on his thigh, not that I seen his thigh, I’m not of that persuasion, don’t get me wrong.” But much as he tried to engage them, much as he thrust his face into theirs, much as he interposed himself between them and their All Day breakfasts, so much did they ignore him, freeze him, give him the elbow and the old heave-ho. So he would wander out, disconsolate, into the open air, sucking up from between his fingers a sausage he had snatched—call this a sausage, it’s not what I call a sausage, bleeding yankee-doodle pap, how can you have a sausage wiv no skin?—and around the tankers and the trucks he would slide on his crepe-soled feet, calling, “Aitkenside, MacArthur, are you there, lads?”
For in truth he intended to cripple them but after he had crippled them he meant to make his peace. For they were dead too and in the halls of the dead they were in different halls. And in the lorry parks of the dead they had not coincided yet. He would rub his chin, contemplating his sins, then slide among the trucks, scrambling up to unhook tarpaulins, dragging up the crinkled covers to see what was stowed beneath. Once eyes looked back at him, and those eyes were alive. Once eyes looked back at him and those eyes were dead, swivelled up in their sockets and hard like yellow marbles. When he saw eyes he hooked back the tarp double-quick. Unless the cable had zinged out of his hand. That could happen.
And them silly tarts who was now in the LADIES titivating, he would think of them with contempt: ooh Colette, do you want a gherkin with your toastie? I’ll give you gherkin, gel, he would think. But then if he had dallied too long among the men, if he thought they might drive off without him, his heart would hammer at his dried ribs: wait for me! And he would sprint back to the public area, as far as sprint was in him, his legs being, as they were, multiply fractured and badly set: he would sprint back and swish in—bloody central locking!—through the air vent, roll into the back seat, and collapse there, puffing, panting, wrenching off his shoes, and Colette—the stringy one—would complain, what’s that smell? It came to his own nostrils, faintly: petrol and onions and hot dead feet.
If his owners were still in the LADIES, he would not sit alone and wait for them. He would insinuate himself into other cars, loosening the straps of baby seats, wrenching the heads off the furry animals that dangled from the back windows: spinning the furry dice. But then, when he had done all the mischief he could think of, he would sit on the ground, alone, and let people run over him. He would chew his lip, and then he would sing softly to himself:
Hitler has only got one ball,
Hitler has only got one ball,
His mother, bit off the other,
But Capstick has no balls at all.
The missus don’t like it when I sing that, he would mutter to himself. She don’t like reminding, I suppose. Thinking of the old Aldershot days, he’d sniffle a little. Course she don’t like reminding, course she don’t. He looked up. The women were approaching, his missus rolling towards him, her pal skipping and yattering and twirling her car keys. Just in time, he slid into the back seat.
Alison’s spine tensed as he settled himself, and Colette’s nostrils twitched. Morris laughed to himself: she thinks she don’t see me, but in time she’ll see me, she thinks she don’t hear me but she’ll come to hear, she don’t know if she smells me, she hopes she don’t, but she don’t want to think it’s herself. Morris lifted himself in his seat and discharged a cabbagey blast. Colette swung them through the EXIT sign. A flag flew at half mast over the Travelodge.
At Junction 23 a lorry carrying bales of straw cut in ahead of them. The wisps blew back towards them, back down the empty grey road, back towards the south. The morning clouded up, the sky assumed a glacial shimmer. The sun skulked behind a cloud, smirking. As they turned off the M1 onto the A52, the bells peeled out to mark the end of the National Silence. Curtains were drawn in the Nottingham suburbs.
“That’s nice,” Alison said. “It’s respectful. It’s old-fashioned.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Colette said. “It’s to keep the sun out, so they can see the TV.”
They pulled into the hotel car park, and Colette jumped out. A spirit woman slid into her place in the driver’s seat. She was little, old, and poor, and she seemed overwhelmed to find herself behind the wheel of a car, dabbing her hands at the indicators, saying, ee, this is a novelty, do you pedal it, miss? Excuse me, excuse me, she said, do you know Maureen Harrison? Only I’m looking for Maureen Harrison.
No, Al said kindly, but I’ll tell you if I bump into her.
Because Maureen Harrison were friends with me, the little woman said, aye, she were an’ all. A complaining note entered her voice, faint and nostalgic, like the moon through mist. Maureen Harrison were me friend, you know, and I’ve been searching this thirty year. Excuse me, excuse me, miss, have you seen Maureen Harrison?
Al climbed out. “That’s Mandy’s car, she’s early too.” She looked around. “There’s Merlin. And there’s Merlyn with a y. Dear God, I see his old van has got another bash.” She nodded towards a shiny new minivan. “That’s those white witches from Egham.”
Colette lugged the bags out of the boot. Alison frowned.
“I’ve been meaning to say something. I think we should go shopping for you, if you’ve no objection. I don’t feel a nylon holdall gives quite the right message.”
“It’s designer!” Colette bellowed. “Nylon holdall? I’ve been all around Europe with this. I’ve been in Club Class.”
“Well, it doesn’t look designer. It looks like market stall.”
They checked in, squabbling. Their room was a box on the second floor, overlooking the green paladins that received the back-door rubbish. Morris strolled around making himself at home, sticking his fingers with impunity into the electrical sockets.
There was a tapping from beyond the wall, and Alison said, “That’ll be Raven, practicing his Celtic Sex Magic.”
“What happened to Mrs. Etchells, did she get a lift in the end?”
“Silvana went for her. But she’s asked to be dropped off at some bed and breakfast in Beeston.”
“Feel
ing the pinch, is she? Good. Cheating old bat.”
“Oh, I think she does all right, she does a lot of postal readings. She’s got regulars going back years. No, it’s just she finds a hotel impersonal, she says, she prefers a family home. You know what she’s like. She reads the tea cups and leaves her flyer. She tries to sign up the landlady. Sometimes they let her stop for nothing.”
Colette pulled a sheaf of Al’s new leaflets out of their box. They had chosen lavender, and a form of wording that declared her to be one of the most acclaimed psychics working in Britain today. Al had objected, modestly, but Colette said, what do you want me to put? Alison Hart, Slightly Famous Along The A4?
The schedule was this: a Fayre this evening, Saturday, to be followed next day by a Grand Fayre, where a group of them would have their forty-minute slots on the platform; meanwhile, whoever was not onstage could carry on with private readings in the side rooms.
The venue was an old primary school, the marks of violence still chipped into its red brick. As Al stepped inside she shuddered. She said, “As you know, my schooldays weren’t what you call happy.”
She put a smile on her face, and lollopped among the trestles, beaming from side to side as her colleagues set out their stalls. “Hi Angel. Hi Cara, how are you? This is Colette, my new assistant and working partner.”
Cara, setting down her Norse Wisdom Sticks, lifted her sunny little face. “Hi, Alison. I see you’ve not lost any weight.”
Mrs. Etchells staggered in, a box of baubles in her arms. “Oh, what a journey! What a day after the night before!”
“You got a toy boy, Mrs. Etchells?” Cara asked, giving Al a wink.
“If you must know, I was up all night with the Princess. Silvana, love, help me dress my table, would you?”
Silvana, raising her pencilled brows and hissing between her teeth, dumped down carrier bags and unfurled Mrs. Etchell’s fringed crimson cloth into air laden already with the smell from oil burners. “Personally,” she said, “I never heard a squeak from Di. Mrs. Etchells reckons she was with her, talking about the joys of motherhood.”
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